


They fought two wars. I did not take part.

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [176]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Frog and Sticks are here too!, Gen, Grief, Haldar's death, Helcaraxë, Hurt/Comfort, We're all talking about Russandol but are we SAVING Russandol??, doctoring, in between Angband and Mithrim, title from a poem about the Sioux by William E. Stafford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22182151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Haleth is—young. She knows that, deeply and secretly. She won’t ever say it aloud. She is still some distance from twenty summers, and this is what forces her youth (as does her memory), but in the dawn-light of day, youth bleeds the same as age does. She can and has killed, she can has led those who were willing to follow through frost and fire.But Fingon is her friend, and he is right.They must share their trust.
Relationships: Fingon | Findekáno & Haleth of the Haladin, Haleth of the Haladin & Arien, Haleth of the Haladin & Gwindor, Haleth of the Haladin & Haldar, Haleth of the Haladin & Lúthien Tinúviel
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [176]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	They fought two wars. I did not take part.

Haleth does not kill out of mercy. To do so is an insult; violence by a kind hand is indistinguishable from pity. If a creature—not a man—stumbles under the weight of some hurt beyond healing, the arrow to its round eye is not mercy, but honor.

Killed like that, the creature’s spirit can run or fly or swim again, swiftly and without fear.

If she was as brave as Wachiwi and Wister think her, as Luthien and Thingol think her, as Fingolfin and Finrod think her—

(If she was brave, she would ask someone to tell her how exactly her brother died.)

_You have too many. Too many thinking._

The air is snow-cold. Damp on the tongue, biting in the ears. Nothing like _real_ cold. Nothing like the flesh-flaking torment of the midlands.

But still: cold.

Overhead, the sky is grey-mottled; splintered by light that seems to hold itself back, a silent tongue behind the teeth of the clouds. An eagle wheels; Haleth’s ears ring with its scream.

She gave Gwindor a gun and two coats. _His name is Russandol_ , he said, desperate for her to know, but maybe she already _had_ known. She prides herself on a keen memory, one that serves her as the chieftan she is, but she does not remember—much—about their meeting, and the day that followed.

Haldar was dead when she strode into that foul compound.

Then he was alive again, only so that he could die in her hope.

_Never hope. Never pity._

Haleth circles the camp. It has swollen to a small city. The freed slaves number nearly fifty. This, added to nearly sixty, since there were no more than five lost at the skirmishes of two days ago. She will trouble Turgon for the exact count; he keeps guard of such things. _Ledgers_ , he calls them, very gravely, when they find new leather and canvas for him to write upon.

Some habits do not die with the dead.

She fondles her pistol. It, too, has gone cold against her hip. Two women and Wister trundle by with baskets of dirty bandages. Wister’s generally amiable face is screwed up in disgust. They are used to doctoring wounds. Used to the smell of sweat and filth.

But here are so many—dozens and dozens, and not a face among them that did not _know_.

When Haleth sees Gwindor, leader of the people who were slaves, dragging his body and those of two children over the dry-lipped, snow-waiting ground, she must ponder whether _he_ has become a creature or not. She has no intention of killing him, but the sickness around him floats through the air like ash. It is worse than poor Wister’s bandages.

Haleth has choked on ash for the last time, burning the tomb where she did not even find her brother’s bones. She watches his slow progress without pity, and then, with her coat slapping at her heels (for now there is wind), she continues circling the edge of the camp until she reaches the store tent where Fingon has hoarded his supplies.

Gwindor will come here, she thinks, because he left his friend in Fingon’s care. When he comes, Haleth will greet him.

She takes up her position. From the angle at which she stands, she can see the half-blind woman called Belle, coming out into the open air.

_Who did this to her?_ Haleth demanded, but the women who tended her shook their heads, afraid.

The twisting scars across her cheeks and the socket of her eye were old; it was possible that no one knew who had made them.

Possible that no one knew where Haldar—even though they all knew that he—

“What is she doing outside?” Haleth snaps, and Wachiwi, who has one arm around Belle’s shoulders, helping her sit upright on a rumpled blanket, answers,

“She wished to see.”

_See…what? The sun, setting? Or her friends?_

Wachiwi, like Fingon, can be too forgiving. _Soft_ is not the word. They would neither of them have survived, if they were soft. Wachiwi is three years older than Haleth, and she has grieved as much as Haleth has, but she smiles more easily.

“They have returned,” Haleth says.

Belle of the carven face goes corpse-still. Her mouth falls open. No sound leaves it.

Here is Gwindor, and here are the children. The girl-child has wept until her eyes are swollen. She is still weeping. The tiny boy, whose skin is dark enough to be one of Haleth’s own people, breaks away from Gwindor’s hold with a wordless cry. He drops to crawl on his hands and knees, his scrawny ribs spasming as he does so.

Russandol was the name of the man with the twisted body and the clear eyes, begging to be left behind.

 _For these children._ Haleth is numb, snow-cold. She lifts one arm and rests it against her breast. Then she folds the other over it. Her fingers grip her elbows. All of this, as if she loads a weapon.

Gwindor is slack, wild-eyed, spent.

“Steady now,” Fingon says, coming up beside her.

He is speaking, Haleth realizes, to _her_. But then, that should come as no surprise after nearly a year in Fingon’s company. Fingon always knows who leads.

Gwindor, for his part, has eyes for nobody but Belle. Belle’s grey, lacerated hands claw at the earth.

“Don’t,” Wachiwi murmurs, guiding them back to Belle’s lap, “Don’t do that, Estrela.”

Gwindor stops a dozen paces off. The crawling child scuttles close to Belle—Estrela’s—side, squeals when she reaches for him, and curls away.

“Belle…” Gwindor begins, slurring the name like it alone can break him. Haleth steps forward. 

“You will speak to _me_.” She is older, now, than the bones she cannot see. “You are our guests. Not our prisoners, but not trusted. Do you understand?”

Gwindor’s face turns towards her, and his lips peel back, almost feral. Haleth, cautiously stone-faced, recognizes the grimace as one of grief, so she waits.

In this interminable silence, there is only:

The wind, climbing the hours of the day; the billow of canvas; the chatter of voices that belong to no one here.

Gwindor looks at the sky. Gwindor looks at his hands. The smaller child, the one with eyes as berry-dark as Haldar’s, folds himself between Estrela’s blanketed knees at last. Estrela, not tilting her gaze to him, rocks him in her arms.

“Children are proof,” he says at last.

Haleth stood down Thingol, vowed revenge before she had any idea what revenge could be.

_You are Haleth—he spoke of you, your brother—he spoke of you—said we would know you when you came--_

_He is dead. I am sorry, we are sorry, he—_

“Proof,” Gwindor tries again. Wachiwi has not left Estrela’s side, and Fingon has not left Haleth’s. Out of the corner of her eyes she can see how much Fingon becomes Fingolfin. His brow is set firm; his jaw evenly matches it. All patience, and no little love: that is how Fingon survived the winter, the loss of his family (whose names Haleth knows), and the loss of something else. “Proof that I found—”

Gwindor’s shoulders convulse, and he drops his face into his shaking hands.

Haleth hears the eagle, ringing and ringing in her ears.

Estrela rests one stiff, lacerated hand against her throat. There are tears running down her cheek. Just one, for she has not two eyes to weep with. The stick-thin child at Gwindor’s side does not move. There is nothing of a child left about her.

 _That_ stirs Haleth to action.

“Russandol,” she says. “Saved these children as he promised.” She makes a gesture of strong sorrow. It is not one for them to recognize, even. “We honor him.”

“Dead?” Estrela whispers, torn out.

Gwindor does not answer. The sounds slipping through his fingers are not words.

Haleth is ill at ease, now. Grief can drive people mad. She looks at Fingon. He nods, his lips firmly together, and reaches into the satchel at his side.

“This is a little Scotch whiskey,” he says. “I think you, Gwindor, had better have a sip of it. Estrela, shall we fetch you something to rest against? I am sure—I am sure Wachiwi can find you a flour-sack, since the supply tent is nearby. Come, we are friends here, I swear it. I give you all my word.”

Estrela shuts her single eye, dragging in a sob of a breath. Haleth does not shut her own, though she wants to. She feels guilty for the first time, because she almost believed that this woman could not cry.

_Do not kill in mercy; rather, look with honor. A woman brave enough to bear what this woman did has not an eye any longer but a sun, blazing from her cruelly-punished face._

_Oh, Grandmother_ , Haleth thinks, feeling—not young, but suddenly lonely. _Are you with me still?_

“This Russandol,” Fingon murmurs, over Gwindor’s horrible gasps. “He must have been very good.”

Such words are not cruel, from Fingon.

Fingon drops to one knee, then, and offers his flask first to Estrela.

Gwindor’s hands fall from his face. His head twitches from side to side. Looking for an escape, or a weapon, perhaps. He does not look like he will be a danger to anyone but himself. Still, Haleth slips her finger to her own gun.

“I lost my mother and my littlest brother,” Fingon says, in a quiet, haunted voice that Haleth has not heard since she found him—and the rest of them—fighting death. “Haleth, here, has lost her family too.”

Before Haleth can protest, Fingon turns his head to look up at her. “We must have trust,” he says. “There is nothing, if we do not share our trust with them.” He rises, lithe on his feet but suddenly old in the stoop of his shoulders. Then he straightens, steps forward, and offers the flask to Gwindor. “You must restore yourself,” Fingon said. “If you grieve him like this, then he would want it. He would want you to stay—stay yourself.”

Gwindor takes the flask.

Two hours later, Fingolfin has joined them, and Wachiwi has gone away. Haleth has never seen grief drive Fingolfin mad. He is both a mountain and something freer. Both at once.

They are still gathered in Fingon’s tent. Night has fallen, and the air is even colder than it was. A makeshift brazier gives them light and warmth. Again, the cold in this place is nothing to be frightened of; it cannot cool their blood low enough for freezing.

Haleth will not be frightened, anyway. She will only be wary, of night closing around them, and of the battered strangers in their midst. The camp is stirring with footsteps, voices, pans clattering, fire crackling.

Hunters could find them easily, but she reminds herself that great strength lies in a herd.

“As I understand it,” Fingon says, tapping his flattened fingers thoughtfully against his knee, “There may be more men and women to rescue?”

Gwindor shakes his head. “He was the last one.”

“And what of those here? Can you vouch for all of them?” Haleth demands. Let Fingon have mercy. She cannot afford to.

Gwindor, with the whiskey in him, has begun to speak like a man again, but that does not mean he is exactly forthcoming. “They all wanted out of that hole where they’d been beaten and burned. _You_ want more than that?”

“You fought at our side,” Haleth concedes, not looking at Fingon, who doubtless wants to censor her sternness. If Finrod were here he would be little better. “And we at yours. It is only that I left Doriath—a home that is not mine—seeking no allies. That was last summer. I am surrounded by an army now, and I would know what it is that I lead.”

Here, she waits for Gwindor to interject and correct her. He doesn’t. “I told you, if you will give us safety only until MIthrim—”

Fingolfin and Fingon both register their surprise at once, by the matching lift of their straight brows, but Haleth holds up a hand. Fingolfin could overawe her, if he chose, but he never chooses. It is just as he with Aredhel and her guns, Fingon and his doctor’s hands, Finrod and his maps. Fingolfin’s elder brother took his money and, to Haleth’s mind, his wife and son, but she did not learn of it from him.

She respects a man who leads through the talents of others, who keeps his own counsel.

“You told me already of Mithrim,” Haleth says. “I did not tell _you_ , then, that we too are traveling there.”

Belle—Estrela—stirs restlessly on her bedroll. She is exhausted, and the children are curled, sleeping, at her side. Still, Gwindor would not leave her, and so the meeting had to take place in these cramped quarters.

“Why Mithrim?” Gwindor asks.

“We have family there,” Fingon says, grimly calm. Haleth watches Fingolfin. He does not contradict his son any more than he did her.

“Family.” Gwindor narrows his eyes. Then his face goes slack, ugly with pain again. Through it, he says stolidly, “Some of us had friends there.”

“Russandol?” It is Fingon, again, who dares to speak the name.

“Aye.”

“This Russandol,” Fingolfin presses, joining the talk at last. “He was another of the captives?”

Estrela says, hoarsely, “We didn’t know much of him.” With only one eye, it is obvious when her gaze flits to Gwindor; she has to turn her rough head towards him.

No secrecy, perhaps, is even intended by such a look. She may simply wish to know how Gwindor fares.

Gwindor’s jaw works. He picks at the slab of cornbread that rests perilously, on one knee. Fingon fetched it for him, coaxing him to eat. “I’ll not speak of him,” he says heavily. “What’s there to say? We were all taken by Gothmog or Bauglir, at one time or another. Or Mairon.”

Estrela makes a curious sound in her throat.

“The first two names I know,” Fingolfin answers. Haleth nods her agreement, and he goes on, “But who is Mairon?”

Haleth sits by the fire. Wister is smoking. Fingon sterilizes his instruments by passing them through the flame; he prefers boiling water, Haleth knows, but there is little enough of that here.

Fingon is biting his lip.

If Wachiwi were here, she would ask what was troubling him. But at present, Wachiwi is seeing to the women and children, along with Aredhel and Turgon and Galadriel. Fingolfin is keeping watch at the northern edge of the camp; a duty he takes willingly, nearly every night.

Haleth tucks her fingers beneath her arms to warm them, since holding her hands to the flames is a tiresome business, and waits Fingolfin’s son out.

“I would that Finrod and Beren had returned already,” is what he says, when he does speak.

“So you think there _is_ a monster in the woods?” Haleth asks. She remembers—a child’s tale—that her grandmother told, about a giant crow that went about picking out eyes.

_Estrela…_

She has not felt afraid in a long time, and she does not intend to begin again now. They are well-guarded here. Fingolfin’s people have guns. Her people have guns and bows. All of them have knives. And runaway slaves—freed slaves—will fight to the death before losing their liberty.

“I think Gwindor is a man who cannot help but tell the truth.” Fingon sighs. “I hate to think of anyone dying alone. Left when everyone else was freed—”

“Some died _there_ , too. At their Gothmog’s compound.”

He turns an anguished face to her. Even after all his losses, Fingon still feels pain keenly. Haleth knows and likes this about him. Maybe if she was not who she is, she would fall in love with a man this strong and kind. But she has no need for that.

Needing Fingon is a greater sensation than the mere betrayals of a woman’s fluttering heart. 

“A quick death in battle,” Fingon says, “Is more and less pain. I know that. I only—this Russandol must have thought himself free, for a little while. He passed the children to Gwindor. They are friends, they would have spoken, before...”

“Yet we will not ask what Gwindor saw,” Haleth answers.

“How could we?” Fingon whispers. The thread in his braided hair shines by firelight.

Wister coughs.

( _Mairon took him_ , Gwindor told them, and would say no more.)

Voices carry on the night breeze; Finrod and Beren have returned. Haleth settles back into silence, letting Fingon speak to his cousin, who has a deer, slung over his shoulders, and Luthien’s boy, who has two jackrabbits in hand. As they rise and depart, blurring into the bustle of the camp, Haleth is small again, standing at the edge of an acre of dust, desperately drawing a path with the sharp end of a stick.

_Mairon. Russandol. Mithrim._

She could repeat these names a hundred times over, until the sun goes up. She doesn’t know what she could change that would let her conscience rest.

Forcing her breath to travel its usual path, in and out, she retreats also to the usual comfort: calm reason.

_In a month’s time, you will be with Thingol again. Bring these people to their Mithrim—yes, not the slaves only, but Fingolfin’s lot. Then, as you have vowed, go back to Doriath with your people, with your—_

_It is different, now._

_We are all each other’s people, now._

Haleth is—young. She knows that, deeply and secretly. She won’t ever say it aloud. She is still some distance from twenty summers, and this is what forces her youth (as does her memory), but in the dawn-light of day, youth bleeds the same as age does. She can and has killed, she can and has led those who were willing to follow through frost and fire.

But Fingon is her friend, and he is right. 

They must share their trust.

_Mairon. Russandol. Mithrim._

If only someone would tell her, how Haldar died.


End file.
